Why are people not thinking of hell anymore as they did in the past? Lent is the season when the Church insists that we look steadily at the truth: the truth about our fragility, sin, death, eternity, and God. Lent does not invite us into morbid fear; it invites us into conversion. It calls us back from a life lived…
An experience can have the epistemic power of disruption, allowing for a new way of seeing what has become familiar in our lives. This reflection offers some insights into an experience that has initiated a new way of seeing Lent, one that I invite you to explore with me. On the second Sunday of Lent, 2026, I had the pleasure…
After last week’s Ash Wednesday Mass, someone asked me whether I believe in the existence of hell—and whether hell is really the abode of the devil. I replied, “yes,” but I could not explain it further because many others were still lining up to greet me or receive ashes. The liturgy had been moving, almost searching. The sign of the…
As Christians across the globe enter the sacred season of Lent, Pope Leo XIV has issued a compelling message urging the faithful to rediscover the transformative power of listening, fasting, and communal conversion. His reflection, titled “Listening and Fasting: Lent as a Time of Conversion”, frames Lent not merely as a ritual obligation but as a spiritual reset—an invitation to…
“Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. Repent and believe the Gospel.” The liturgy of Ash Wednesday places before the Church a truth that is at once sobering and profoundly liberating. “Remember that you are dust.” Humanity is dust—finite, vulnerable, radically dependent on God. Yet this incompleteness is not a defect in our humanity. It is…